Jack of Spades

by James Hankins

  Spader sighed.

  “We on the same page?” Struthers asked.

  “Sure, Cap.”

  “Good. Now go find the bad guy.” Spader stood and headed for the door. As he left Struthers’s office, he heard the captain say to himself, “Guy had his goddamned ear cut off, for Chrissake.”

  “Well?” Dunbar asked as Spader returned to his desk. “Sally go for it?”

  “We’re heading to Pendleton’s house right now. I have some questions for him.”

  “So Sally went for it, huh?” He looked surprised.

  “Not so much, no.”

  “So why are we going to Pendleton’s right now?”

  “I told you, I have some questions for him.”

  “Sally finds out, he’s not gonna like it.”

  “He told me to keep working the case. I got some questions for a suspect and I’m going to ask them. If Sally gives me grief about it, I’ll tell him I was just following up with Pendleton as one of the victims.”

  “Sure, John, he’ll fall for that.”

  “Don’t worry about the captain. He’s a little cranky right now, and I don’t blame him. But when we snap the cuffs on Galaxo, the captain’s going to be a happy man. Now come on, let’s go see Pendleton, find out if he’s been maiming and killing people lately.”

  TWENTY

  Spader was about to ring the doorbell to Pendleton’s house when the front door opened. Louise Pendleton, Stanley’s mother, stood inside the foyer, her hand on the knob. Stanley sat in his wheelchair just behind her.

  “Detectives?” the woman said. “I didn’t realize you were coming.” She turned to her son. “Stan, Detectives Spader and Dunkirk are here.”

  “Yeah, Mom, but I think it’s Detective Dunbar, not Dunkirk.”

  She turned to Dunbar. “I’m sorry, Detective.”

  Dunbar waved her apology away.

  “We have a few more questions for you.” Spader said. “Did we come at a bad time?”

  “Well, I was just going to drive Stanley down to the library. He’s working today.”

  “Should we come back another time then?”

  “I can be late,” Pendleton said. “I’m a volunteer. What are they gonna do? Fire me? And you said dropping me off now was gonna make you early at the hospital, Mom, so we can talk to the detectives for a few minutes, right?”

  “I suppose we can.” She smiled. “Please come in.”

  She led them into the living room, then went into the kitchen to get the iced tea she’d offered and they’d accepted. Spader sat on the couch and Dunbar took an armchair. Pendleton stayed in his wheelchair. Spader looked around the room. Photographs of Pendleton, of Pendleton’s mother, and of the two of them together lined the mantel over the fireplace. Spader looked over his shoulder. Behind him, tucked between the wall and the couch, was an apparatus that looked almost like parallel bars. It was about ten feet long, longer than the couch, extending past it and into the corner. Spader recognized it as a set of bars that patients in physical therapy would use to learn to walk again, one hand on each bar, pulling their bodies between them. Jammed as the equipment was behind the couch, Spader figured it hadn’t seen use in a long time. Then again, Spader wondered if maybe it actually had.

  “Making any headway on the case?” Pendleton asked.

  “Maybe. Not as much as we’d like, not yet, but we’ve got a few leads. How’s your ear?”

  Pendleton still had a bandage where his ear used to be. The dressing looked fresh, like it had been changed just that morning. His mother was a nurse, which certainly would have helped in that regard.

  “How’s my ear? Not sure. I haven’t seen it in a while.” He smiled. Spader smiled politely. Dunbar seemed to laugh genuinely. “Sorry. Just my way of dealing with it. It’s okay, I guess. Still has to heal for a while—a couple of months, they tell me—before we can think about getting a fake one put on.” Spader nodded. They sat in silence for a moment. “You said you had some more questions for me?”

  “That’s right. We’re putting together profiles of Galaxo’s victims, thinking it may give us insight into how he’s choosing them. So there are some specific things we need to know. First of all, would you mind telling us again about the accident, the one that put you in that chair?”

  Pendleton shrugged. “I was walking through the woods, along a steep hill, and I just slipped. Rolled a little, bounced a little.”

  “That must have been scary. Were you alone?”

  “There was another kid with me.” Had Pendleton hesitated? “He went for help.”

  Spader nodded. “So where did this happen? Your accident.” He flipped through his notebook when he asked the questions, as if he was just making conversation while looking for a specific page.

  Spader thought he detected a slight hesitation before Pendleton answered, but perhaps he hadn’t. “My friend lived near some woods.”

  “Ah.” Spader flipped through another few pages and said casually, “What was your friend’s name?”

  “My friend?” The question seemed to truly take Pendleton by surprise. He blinked once, then said, “It’s been so long. After that day, I’m not sure I ever saw him again.” Pendleton’s mother returned with four glasses of iced tea on a tray with a floral design on it. “Mom, you remember his name? The kid who went for help when I fell? Timmy something, right?”

  Mrs. Pendleton looked completely at a loss. She sat down on the couch, at the other end from Spader. “I’m sure I don’t remember.”

  “Simmons,” Pendleton said, as if it just came to him. “Timmy Simmons, though he probably goes by Tim or Timothy now, seeing as he’s not eight years old anymore.” He smiled. Spader said nothing. “Where’d they live, Mom? Leominster, was it?”

  She hesitated, then nodded. “Leominster, yes.” She shook her head, then added, “I’m sorry, it’s not something we like to think about anymore.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Spader said. “Leominster? That’s something like sixty miles away from here, take you over an hour to get there. Long way to travel just to play with a friend.”

  Pendleton frowned at Spader. “We weren’t really friends. I think Mom was making a house call or something, you know, visiting a shut-in or something like that, and Timmy lived there. While Mom was doing her job, this kid and I went out to play in the woods behind his house. When I fell, he ran to get my mom.”

  “I see. It’s a good thing you were there, Mrs. Pendleton, you being a nurse.”

  She shrugged. “There wasn’t much I could do, though, was there?”

  “No, I guess not. So Stanley, you, what, you broke your back?”

  “Broke two bones in my back, vertebrae, right around the level of my belly button.”

  “And you hurt your face, too?”

  “Yeah. Nice, huh? I know how it looks, my face, but I’m used to it now.”

  Spader considered asking about any other scars or injuries from the fall, just to see if Pendleton offered up the disfigured ear, but he decided not to reveal their knowledge of that. Instead he said, “Spending all these years in a wheelchair, it must be very hard on you. Been a long time, right? How old were you when it happened?”

  “Eight.”

  “And you never walked again?”

  “Nope. I tried for a while, even though I never had a chance. My mom even got Mass General, where she works, to sell us those old rehabilitation parallel bars there. I was still a kid then. She used a lot of the money from my father’s life insurance policy. But I got nowhere with them. I want to get rid of them, but she won’t. After all these years, she’s still holding out hope.”

  “I pray for a miracle every day, Stan,” she said. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “It’s been twenty-one years,” Pendleton said. “If it was going to happen for me, it would have happened by now.”

  “You have to try, though. You haven’t touched those bars in years.”

  “There’s no point, Mom.” Pendleton looked at the dete
ctives. “We have this conversation a couple of times a year.”

  Spader nodded. “Your doctor thought you might be able to walk again?”

  Pendleton shrugged. “Nope. He never thought that. Miracles happen, I guess,” he said, glancing at his mother, “but my doctor never gave me any hope. That doesn’t stop Mom from praying, though, and from nagging me from time to time to give it a try, I guess to see if maybe God decided to give me a new spinal cord some night while I was sleeping.”

  “Wouldn’t hurt for you to do a little praying for it, too, Stanley.”

  Pendleton smiled and shook his head.

  “You know,” Spader said, lying completely, “I have a friend in New York who’s a neurologist. Specializes in just the kind of physical trauma it sounds like you experienced. I bet my friend knows your doctor. Probably goes to the same conferences, things like that. Who was your doctor?”

  Pendleton hesitated, then said, “Don’t really have one anymore. No need. I’m not getting any better or any worse. And Mom takes care of most of my needs.”

  “I see.” Spader decided not to push. If Pendleton was Galaxo, he’d certainly be suspicious after this visit, but there was no need to wave too many red flags. “Your father passed away quite a few years ago, is that right?”

  “His father had lung cancer,” Mrs. Pendleton said. “Smoked like a…uh…”

  “Chimney?” Dunbar offered.

  “I was going to say like a cigarette-smoking machine, but chimney sounds more right.”

  Spader flipped a few pages of his notebook again. “Mr. Pendleton, do you remember—”

  “Would you mind calling me Stanley?”

  “Of course not. Do you remember where you were the nights of June eighth and June thirtieth?”

  Pendleton frowned. He took a sip of iced tea. “I’m not sure. Why?”

  “Those were the nights of Galaxo’s first crimes.”

  Pendleton was still frowning. “I don’t understand. Isn’t that something you usually ask a suspect?”

  Spader forced a chuckle. “Well, yes, it is, but I was just trying to pinpoint your whereabouts those nights to try to determine why Galaxo went after the first two victims on those nights and not you, for instance.”

  “I still don’t get you.”

  “Well, if, for example, he might have gone after you first but you weren’t home that night so he went after somebody else, that would have made you his first choice of victim. And that make might tell us something about him, his pattern, things like that. We learn a lot from a perpetrator’s first victim, and from the order of his later victims.”

  Spader watched closely as Pendleton seemed to consider Spader’s words for a moment, then nodded to himself. “I don’t really remember where I was, but the chances are real good that I was home. Mom was probably here with me, too. Mom, you remember those nights?”

  “I could check my calendar, but we were probably home. We go to bed pretty early around here. Well, I do, anyway. Stanley sometimes stays up late watching TV.”

  Spader pretended to jot something down in his notebook. “How about last night? Were you home last night?”

  Pendleton didn’t answer right away. He looked at Spader, who sat waiting patiently. “Yes, I was home.”

  “Were you home, too, Mrs. Pendleton?”

  “Not last night, no. Another nurse asked to switch shifts, so I worked last night instead of during the day yesterday.”

  “So,” Pendleton said, “I guess I have no alibi for last night—other than this wheelchair, of course.” Pendleton laughed. Spader forced another chuckle of his own. Then they fell silent. Spader didn’t mind letting the silence drag on, even uncomfortably. He wanted to see how Pendleton reacted to it. He sipped his iced tea. Dunbar knew what he was doing, so he sipped his own drink. Finally, Pendleton said, “You said you had questions for me, about the case? Why don’t we get started on that?”

  “We already did. I asked where you were while the first two victims were being assaulted. We’re asking the same of the last two victims, who I’m sure you’ve read about.” One of those victims was Jeffrey Golding, about whom the public knew very few details, and the other was Matthew Finneran, the most recent, of course. “We’re comparing what each was doing when the others were being assaulted.”

  “Oh,” Pendleton said after a moment. “Any other questions? We really want to do all we can to help catch this guy.”

  “I’m sure you do.” Spader looked at the woman on the couch with him. “Mrs. Pendleton, it was rude of us not to ask how you are. How’s your neck?”

  “Me? Oh, I’m fine. A couple of little burns. Nothing to worry about. Nothing like what poor Stanley here had to go through.”

  “No, I guess not. Still, that must have been frightening for you.”

  She shook her head. “I guess I won’t remember it very fondly in twenty years when I’m on my deathbed, looking back on my life.”

  “Thirty years, Mom,” Pendleton said. “Go for thirty.”

  “I’m sixty-one now. Who the heck wants to live to be ninety years old? Nothing works anymore. Twenty more would be more than enough.”

  “But what will I do without you?” He smiled, but Mrs. Pendleton seemed truly bothered by the question.

  “I don’t know, Stan, and that keeps me up at night.”

  “Mom, I was only kidding. I’ll be fine.”

  Mrs. Pendleton nodded. Spader let them have a moment, then said, “By the way, did you ever go to camp when you were a kid? Boy Scout camp or sports camp, anything like that. Maybe before, you know…” He nodded down at Pendleton’s wheelchair.

  “Somebody called and asked me that this morning. No, I never did. We never had enough money for something like that.”

  “I’m sorry if I’m repeating things. Just trying to be thorough.” He looked up from his notepad, into Pendleton’s eyes. “You mind if we look around the house a little? When we were here that first night we focused on certain obvious things, but there may be more here that can help us, things we didn’t notice the first time around.”

  Pendleton looked at his watch. “That would be fine, Detective Spader, except that we’re getting pretty late now. I really should get to the library.”

  Spader nodded. So much for Pendleton doing all he could to help catch Galaxo. “What are they going to do, though, fire you?” He smiled.

  Pendleton laughed. “No, I guess not, but I read to the little kids and they count on me being there at certain times. I’d hate for them to show up, find I’m not there, and leave disappointed.”

  “Oh, well, I’d hate that, too.”

  “Some other time, though,” Pendleton said. “Call ahead so you know we’ll be here and we’ll show you around the whole place.” Which, of course, would give you time to hide the incriminating stuff, right, Stanley? “We’ll give you the run of the place.”

  “That would be great.”

  “Like I said, anything we can do to help. Just give us a call.” He smiled. After a moment, Spader smiled back.

  After leaving Pendleton’s house, Spader took the Crown Vic all the way around the block, then parked in the shade of a huge oak, behind a monstrous pickup truck, two houses away from Pendleton’s. From there, they watched as Mrs. Pendleton wheeled her son down the ramp and over to their specialized van. She opened the door, reached inside for a button or lever or something, and the big door opened on the passenger side and a hydraulic ramp descended.

  “Think he knows we’re watching him right now?” Dunbar asked.

  “He hasn’t looked around at all, not even a little bit, not to check out the day, the weather, see if his neighbors are out and about, nothing, so I’d say, yeah, he knows we’re watching.”

  The van’s hydraulic arms unfolded all the way and the ramp reached the ground. Mrs. Pendleton wheeled her son around the van and up onto the ramp. She appeared to hit a button and the ramp started to rise, lifting Pendleton into the van, chair and all.

  “What,
the guy’s arms don’t work either?” Dunbar said. “Look at them. She’s doing everything for him.”

  “I think that’s for our benefit. He probably said he was tired today or something and she pampers him enough to buy into it. But he wants us to think he’s less able than he is.”

  “Or,” Dunbar said, “he really is less able than you think.”

  Spader watched the woman walk around to the driver’s door and climb into the van. He said, “I’d like to wait until they’re gone, then have a look around inside that house.”

  Dunbar looked over at him, concern etched on his features. “Uh, John, we can’t…and we don’t have nearly enough for a search warrant. I mean, I’m surprised that you of all people—”

  “I’m not saying we should do it.” Spader wasn’t about to let another killer walk on a technicality, though, he supposed, there were a lot of people out there who wouldn’t consider a constitutionally illegal search to be a technicality. “I just said I’d like to.”

  With their windows down to let the small breeze outside push the hot air from their car, they were able to hear the engine start on the Pendletons’ van. Before Mrs. Pendleton could back out of her driveway, Spader dropped his own car into gear and pulled away. As they headed back toward Salem, Dunbar asked, “So what do you think?”

  “What do I think? I think the guy’s a liar. And I think he’s a killer.”

  “You think he can walk?”

  “He can walk.”

  “How?”

  “I have no idea, but he can. You couldn’t tell he was lying?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Dunbar said, “I don’t know why, but he was lying about his accident. When you asked him where it took place, it took a little long for him to come up with it, like maybe he was making up where it happened.”

  “He’s smart.” Spader said. “He has to be to do what he’s been doing and not leave any evidence behind. But even though he’s smart, he’s not that smart. He doesn’t think that well on his feet.”